Following last night’s dramatic win that saw Drake Baldwin’s two homers push the team to victory, the Atlanta Braves are now looking to gain a real foothold in this series ahead of Saturday’s doubleheader. They’ll be sending Bryce Elder to the mound as the lineup will attempt to figure out Edward Cabrera and the Miami Marlins here on Friday night.

Elder is coming into this game after having a pretty solid bounce back start against the Reds in Cincinnati, as he pitched into the seventh inning and only gave up two runs to the Reds in that one. It was an encouraging result but at the same time, there’s always the threat of Elder having a horrible disaster out there — seven of his 18 starts this season have seen him give up at least four runs and of those seven, four of them saw him give up at least five runs.

One of those starts happened on June 22 against the Marlins. While Elder made it into the sixth inning in that one, he did so while giving up 10 hits and five runs in the process. He only walked one batter, so this was clearly a matter of Elder getting knocked around. He also gave up a homer run during that game to Kyle Stowers. I’ll give you one wild guess as to where the ball was located in the zone.

If you guessed “right down the middle” then congratulations, you win a prize! I don’t know what the prize is but you’re a winner in my book!

Anyways, the usual hope with Elder is that he can eat up a decent amount of innings while limiting the number of hangers he throws to hopefully one or two. If he can get away with any hangers that he’s going to throw (at this point with the number of times we’ve seen it, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” he’s going to leave one right down the middle), then he could get deep into this one without getting lit up. Not a lot of this current crop of Marlins players have a ton of experience against Elder, so this’ll definitely be interesting to see how he’ll adjust after the Marlins got the best of him back in June.

Meanwhile, you could say the same about Edward Cabrera. Matt Olson is the team leader in At-Bats against Cabrera with a grand total of seven. Those seven encounters didn’t go particular well for Olson either, as he’ll be heading into this one with a .143 batting average and a .286 OPS against Cabrera so far. Maybe we’ll see him break out and do some damage against Cabrera tonight?

That’s a task that’ll be easier said than done for the Braves. Cabrera is having himself a solid season so far, as he’ll be entering this game with a 3.24 ERA and a 3.82 FIP over exactly 100 innings pitched and 19 starts so far. Despite the fact that he’s definitely got a heck of a heater on his hands, it’s the breaking stuff that makes him tough to deal with. Here in 2025, opposing hitters have only managed a .129 xBA (.117 actual) against his curveball and his slider has an xBA of .202 against it as well. In fact, you could say that his four-seamer is probably the weakest pitch in his arsenal — it’s just that he throws the sinker just as hard and more effectively than his four-seamer. As such, he’s got some nasty breaking stuff and that’ll be tough for the Braves to handle if he’s on his game this evening.

As of right now, the Braves have a winning record this season against four teams: They’ve won the season series against the Cardinals, Reds and Rockies (oh, thank goodness) and are currently up 5-2 against the New York Mets (haha). They’ll have a chance to add the Marlins to that club if they’re able to pull off the victory tonight. While the Braves are basically just playing out the string at this point, any type of motivation other than the pure love of baseball is welcome around here. Let’s see the Braves take control of this season series with a win over the fish tonight, y’all.

Game Date/Time: Friday, August 8, 7:15 p.m. EDT

Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA

TV: FanDuel Sports South, FanDuel Sports Southeast, Gray TV

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan